1H Decoupled 13C MRS in Human Muscle at 7T

Douglas E. Befroy¹, Peter B. Brown¹, Kitt F. Petersen¹, Gerald I. Shulman¹, Douglas L. Rothman¹

MRS at increasing B₀ field strengths is accompanied by an enhancement in signal/noise and spectral resolution. However, the concomitant increase in RF power mitigates these effects for J-coupled metabolites in-vivo since decoupling schemes tend to be prohibited by SAR restrictions. By taking advantage of the higher SAR limits for peripheral tissues and by using relatively small coil geometries to maximize the efficiency of RF transmission, we demonstrate that ¹H decoupled ¹³C-MRS is feasible in superficial human skeletal muscles at 7T.